Condominiums: A Social ExperimentIndividually owned apartments are the main form of housing in many cities. The concept and the management structures that support it are frighteninly new, with untested implications that make this form of housing nothing less than an enormous social experiment. By Stephen Hynes.

The
Mess We Have Made"The nation's built landscape no longer
differentiates between places. The "look of anywhere" prevails. If people
don't know and feel where they are, they don't know who they are." By Roberta Gratz and Norman Mintz.

How
To Be An ArchitectOur future designers are being educated into the science of good design. What they are missing is an understanding of what uderlies this science, or the critical faculties to question its basic assumptions. By Arthur Erickson.

Two
Chairs InterviewArthur Erickson and Stephen Hynes talk
about the problems of development in Vancouver and other cities, and
how they work together to create architecture that promotes community.

Available SpacesSee for yourself the kind of community innovative urban housing can create by leasing a space in Vancouver's most desirable live/work buildings.

Regulatory Agencies:
The Unknown Problem"Progress and
reaction have both turned out to be swindles. Seemingly, there is nothing
left but quietism- robbing reality of its terrors by simply submitting
to it." George Orwell

Different levels
of government impose a very large cost on development. The substantial
array of fees and pronounced requirements is only the beginning. Complex
and changing rules, hidden "internal" policies of interpretation and a
bureaucracy that is so stunningly complex that it is incapable of meaningful
consistency cost far more. This freezes innovation, which carries the unpredictable
overhead of departing from tightly pre-defined pathways of approval, and
this lack of innovation carries substantial social costs.

The Social Developer is dedicated
to the development of a public forum for the discussion of the social
dynamics of modern urban planning and architecture and the influence of
these disciplines on the individual.